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THE ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL GREATNESS. 



AN 



ADDRESS 



BEFOKE THE 



NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 



OF THE 



CITY OF NEW YORK, 



December 22, 184:2. 



BY REV. GEORGE B.' CHEEVER, 



PASTOR OF THE ALLEN STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



■^ of v/aaKx^^ 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN S. TAYLOR & CO., 145 NASSAU ST. 

18 4 3. 






Entered according to tlic Act of CongrcBs, in the year 1843, by 

N. S. PRIME, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 

Southern District of New York. 



NEW YORK: 

Hopkins unci Jennings, I'rinlei-s, 
111 Fulton ^trftt. 



Now York, Dec. 31, 1842. 

Rev, George B. Cheever, 
Sir: — 
As a Committee appointed on behalf of the New England Society, in 
the City of New York, and whose individual opinions render the service 
in every way agreeable, we return to you the sincere thanks of the Society, 
for the Address delivered by you before them at the Tabernacle, on the 
22d inst. ; and earnestly request, that a copy of an Address, so full of the 
spirit and principles of our forefathers, may be given the Society for pub- 
lication. 

We are, very respectfully, 

Your Friends and Servants, 

Thomas Fessenden, 
H. P. Peet, 
Edward S. Gould. 



New York, Janunry 10, 1843. 

Gentlemen : 

I thank you sincerely for your very kind note, requesting for publica- 
tion a copy of the Address delivered before the New England Society, on 
the 22d of December, and have great pleasure in complying with your 
request. 

I have the honour to be, with great respect, 

Gentlemen, 

Your Friend and Servant, 

GEORGE B. CHEEVER. 

Messrs. Thomas Fessenden, ^ 

H. P. Peet, > Committee. 

Edward S. Gould, S 



ADDRESS. 



Sir William Jones, among the multiplicity of his com- 
positions, has left an ode commencing with the following 
question : What cotistitutes a State ? This question com- 
preliends ray subject. I propose to dwell upon the Elements 
of National Greatness. We are certainly entered on a new 
cycle in the affairs of men ; for a nation might, in times 
past, have become great by means which now are altogether 
inadequate. The city which Cain built, though it bore the 
stamp of the first murderer, became, before the deluge, a 
mighty city, and the heart of a great Empire. But no king- 
dom in the antediluvian world was truly great. What con- 
stitutes a State ? Let the poet and legislator first answer. 

Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 

Not starred and spangled courts 
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. 

No : men, high-minded men. 

Men, who their duties know 
But know their rights, and knowing dare maintain. 

These constitute a State, 
And Sovereign Law that State's collected will. 



Men constitute a State, and the character of the State de- 
pends upon the character of the men. One of the most im- 
partial foreign judges of our own country is reported to have 
Sfiven, as the result of his study and observation, that the 
American institutions are good, but the people not good 
enough to support them. We pray God that this may not 
prove to be true. But let us run over some of the Elements 
necessary to National Greatness, and see what among them 
we possess, and of what we are destitute. 

1. In the first place, a good parentage is requisite. 
Hereditary qualities may be traced in nations as in individuals. 
The forty years' history of the Hebrews in the wilderness 
teaches a lesson of importance. It was necessary that that 
generation should all die, that they should turn, return, and 
toil upon their pilgrimage, till the whole race of hereditary 
bondmen had become extinct ; and even then the taint of 
idolatry and slavery remained in them. Now we may justly 
love to speak of our parentage as a people. And we may 
take courage in dwelling upon the love of God in rocking 
tlie cradle of our ancestry by storms and discipline, instead 
of the syren lullaby of a sensual court and a gorgeous hierar- 
^0^ chy. If a man is ever to be one of God's great instruments 
of good to his race, the preparation must be made in laying 
the foundations of his character. It is too late to seek to 
form new men for the occasion when the crisis has come, 
and the habits are already no more than those of ordinary 
manhood. A man's discipline must commence and go for- 



ward with the other causes, which God is making to operate 
for the world's changes, or it cannot be produced in a night. 
No man can go to sleep a common man, to awake, on the 
morning of a political or ecclesiastical revolution, a hero or 
a deep Christian. Napoleon's character was forming with the 
silent progress of the causes which prepared the French revo- 
lution. And Luther's character, by as much greater than Na- 
poleon's as his cause was nobler and holier, was cut as with 
the point of a diamond, and wrought into its unchanging, 
steadfast, reliable qualities, in lonely spiritual discipline, in 
the cloisters at Erfurth. What is true of men is true of na- 
tions. The "yoke" must be "borne in the youth," if we 
would have qualities that shall awe the world in manhood. 

The discipline of our ancestors in laying the foundations of 
many generations in this country, was what we might sup- 
pose it would be, if God intended that in the coming era of 
glory in the world we should be found among the number of 
his favoured nations, when, in a national sense, God shall 
" make up his jewels." If ever a free people wrought out an 
inheritance of liberty through trials, it was our pilgrim ances- 
tors. They went out from one fire into another fire that 
seemed ready to devour them. What the wolves of despot- 
ism and church tyranny had left undone in one hemisphere, 
the wolves and savages of the woods in another seemed 
ready to finish. By trials they were prepared for trials. They 
were the best part of the population of Europe ; but it was 
necessary that in Europe itself they should put off their Eu- 
ropean taint, and receive those germinating principles, which 



should be transplanted with them, to rise in a fresh soil 
above that great growth of underweeds, which otherwise in 
Europe would have overpowered them. 

They were a race that grew out of the noblest principles 
of the Reformation. Until the Reformation had begun to 
purify the world, there was no such race in existence ; God 
and man might have looked about in vain for the materials of 
a virtuous colonization of this country. We cannot help re- 
marking how wonderful was that Divine Providence, which 
turned aside the ships of Columbus from the Northern Coasts 
of this great Continent ; which kept the forests and the rocks 
of New England hidden from the world at a time when no- 
thing but the auri sacra fames, the accursed thirst of gold, 
occupied men's souls ; at a time when there was neither re- 
ligion nor patriotism to colonize a new country, but avarice 
bigotry, and despotism to oppress it ; hidden, until a race of 
men should be ready for His purposes. " Had New England 
been colonized immediately on the discovery of the American 
Continent," says the accomplished native historian of our own 
country,* " the old English institutions would have been 
planted under the powerful influence of the Roman Catholic 
religion ; had the settlement been made under Elizabeth, it 
would have been before the activity of the popular mind in 
religion had conducted to a corresponding activity of mind in 
politics. The Pilgrims were English Protestants ; they were 
exiles for religion ; they were men disciplined by misfortune, 
cultivated by opportunity of external observation, equal in 

♦ Mr. Bancroft. 



rank as in rights, and bound by no code but that of religion 
or the public will." I should add to this, that the public will 
would no more have bound our Puritan ancestors than pri- 
vate despotism, had they felt it to be opposed to the dictates 
of religion. And I must reiterate, what we ought never to 
forget, when the character of the Puritans is in question, 
that remarkable eulogium bestowed upon them by Hume, — 
that amidst the absolute authority of the Crown, " the pre- 
cious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved 
BY THE PURITANS ALONE ; and it is to this sect that the 
English owe the whole freedom of their constitu- 
tion." I wonder at this historian, and with my whole heart 
I thank him, that with all his partialities and prejudices, he 
should have penned concerning the Puritans a paragraph 
of such high, bold, undaunted truth. 

As natives of New England, we are proud of the claims of 
a Puritan and a Protestant ancestry. These two appellatives 
have comprehended about as much virtue, nobleness, free- 
dom, and piety, as the world is ever likely to witness in 
combination. And as to the sterner virtues of our Puritan 
ancestors, which it has become fashionable in some quar- 
ters to depreciate, — I do not wonder that a sensual world 
and a self-indulgent spirit carp at them. " Indeed," said the 
great Edmund Burke, on a great occasion, " the whole class 
of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost 
too high for humanity." Nevertheless, it is by the spirit of 
those virtues alone, that our institutions can be preserved, 
or that we. as a people, can be made, what we hope we yet 

2 



10 

may be, the salt of freedom and religion to the world. Our 
Puritan ancestors were disciplined by self-denial ; this com- 
prehends the whole foundation of their character; for self- 
denial is, and to fallen beings ever must be, the ground of 
all virtue. The inheritance which, in the exercise of " the 
severe and restrictive virtues," they procured for us by suf- 
fering, can be preserved by us, or imparted to the world, 
only through a participation in the same discipline. Luxury 
on our part, and sarcasms on our fathers' virtues, will never 
do it. 

2. One of the qualities which distinguished our Puritan 
ancestors was a high regard for the Word of God and 
high views of its inspiration. This is one of the qualities, 
by which, as the world approaches its state of glory, nations 
must be distinguished as well as men. This quality must 
be a national element, above all sectarianism, entering into 
all developements of national life, in whatever organizations, 
but especially in Common Schools. Our common schools are 
to the nation what the lungs are to the body ; and any foul or 
bitter elements that enter into them will be followed by disease 
and paleness in our national existence. A pure atmosphere 
of divine truth is as necessary to the health and life of these 
national vitalities, as a due quantity of oxygen to the physi- 
cal play of the lungs. Suffer your schools to be turned from 
their noble purposes for party ends, or to be defrauded of 
the Word of God, and you put the seeds of consumption in 
the vital organs of your country ; sooner or later the fruits 



11 

will make their appearance ; — the hectic fever, the wild 
pulse, the breaking up of the system, must follow. 

3. In addition to this, I may next remark, that the grand 
principle of Protestantism, which is private judgment 
OF THE Scriptures, must characterize a nation, as well as 
high views of their divine authority. This is one of the 
elements of freedom of thought. Bind a man in his religion, 
and you have bound him essentially, and may do with him 
what you please. The Romanists know this. Chain a 
man's religious opinions to any court, church, council, or 
canonized father, to any thing but the Bible, and your fetters 
are upon his liberty, your iron has entered into his soul. 

From spiritual despotism to civil and political the path 
is short, easy, inevitable. Hence, we cannot but view with 
the most jealous distrust the progress of that anti-Protest- 
ant tendency which has been stealing upon us from a 
monarchy and a Church-Establishment. We should look 
upon this matter in the spirit of no sect, but in the light 
of an interest dear to us all as the common light of day, 
whether we be Christians or infidels. This interest is that 
of every man of this Republic, who is not ready to give up 
the grand principle of republicanism, the right of private 
judgment and action in regard to the men, principles, and 
measures of the administration of his country's government. 
Dearly as I might love my church, were I indissolubly bound 
to any form of church government, I would rather it were 
in the bottom of the salt sea sunk, than made a machinery 



12 

of manacles and fetters for the souls of men. I am sure 
that this growing^ scorn of the Reformation, and this depre- 
ciation of the grand principle of private judgment in matters 
of religion, springs not from a new form of piety, but from 
the ever vital spirit of despotism in the old world. And if 
anywhere I could trace the proofs of that foreign conspiracy, 
which has been asserted, against the liberties of this country, 
and against all mankind through our subjection, I could 
find it here. 

Private judgment in matters of faith, private judgment in 
matters of liberty, — these are two kindred rights and pos- 
sessions. The destruction of them both constitutes a per- 
fect despotism. Take away either, and you endanger the 
other ; but the bridge is more easily thrown up from the de- 
struction of the first to that of the second, and then your 
spiritual despotism may march her troops across into your 
civil territory almost without notice, because it takes us on 
our noble side. We are not apt to suspect our religion of 
endangering our liberties ; and hence this union of spiritual 
and civil despotism may be going on, may have been con- 
summated, and a people yet be scarcely aware that it is done, 
or how it is done. This noble Protestant principle therefore 
is to be sacredly preserved and guarded as an element of na- 
tional greatness. No where in the world is there a more 
complete subjection of the national mind, a thicker covering 
of the fire of liberty with frosty ashes, than where this prin- 
ciple is disregarded or repudiated. 

I have seen this. Travelling across the Tyrol Alps, where 



13 

the forms of Hofer and his noble band might seem to be at 
every step around the traveller, where the spirit of freedom 
seems a quality in the bracing air, and the very mountains 
are uttering to the storms the chant of man's liberty and 
immortality, even there, as I enter the city of Innspruck, 
cradled as it is in among mountains, that with every 
glance upward flash defiance to the tyrant, I see the open 
mouths of brazen cannon planted across the public square, 
and I, a citizen of the United States, am defended at the 
point of the bayonet from stepping beyond the line of their 
enclosure, even in a time of profound peace ! Why was 
this? I know of but one solution, one meaning in the vigi- 
lance of tyranny. That public square, lynx-eyed despotism 
had fixed upon as the place, in the heart of that city, whither 
its patriots would rush to the rescue, if at any time the 
spirit of liberty should grow too strong for its restraints. It 
was in an Austrian region that I had to conceal my Italian 
Bibles, which I wished to carry as a present from a friend 
to a friend in Italy, lest I might get into difficulty from being 
found with such an instrument of religious and civil free 
dom upon my person. All tyrants know, with the instinct 
of despotism, that if Faith instead of superstition gets posses- 
sion of the people, there is an end to their power of bondage. 
The principle of private judgment would overturn the gor- 
geous structure of civil and religious tyranny from its foun- 
dation. Men have bound the world in a civil and religious 
frost like iron; — well may they be afraid of Faith ; it is a 
spring thaw, that loosens the avalanche. 



14 

The State alone has impressed despotism enough upon 
men, but the State alone has usually left the religious be- 
ing of mankind free. The State in union with the Church 
developes another form of despotism, and carries tyranny 
into the spiritual world, and thence back again with addi- 
tional strength into the political world. The union of Church 
and State not only supplies religious fanaticism with political 
power, but it arms political tyranny with the sanctions of the 
unseen world. 

A sect united with the State is sure to persecute : the 
power of persecution must be taken away, and kept away 
forever. It is not that the Romanist, the Congregationalist, 
the Socinian, or the Prelatist, has not the perfect right to 
choose his own religion, and to worship in it with a freedom 
like the air that he breathes ; but it is that he has not the 
right to enforce his religion upon me, or to make the unhal- 
lowed and arrogant assumption, that his Church alone is 
the Church of Christ on earth, and that all others are to be 
consigned over to God's " uncovenanted mercies," especially 
when this enforcement is grounded on the possession of cer- 
tain arbitrary forms, instead of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
Do you wish to see the tendency of such assumptions ? I will 
read to you a passage from a British Review of high authori- 
ty, a passage worthy of the palmiest state of Popery in the 
noon of the world's night : " All the members of a State 
ought to belong to one established Church ; and wherever 
the contrary is the case, it proves a source of weakness to 
that State, which then ceases to live by its internal vitality, 



15 

and must seek its support from without. Wliere, however, 
the number of Dissenters is small, and the State powerful, 
the danger is less imminent. Strictly speaking, religious 
sects can only be tolerated in a State, and the rank they hold 
in it can be only one degree higher than that held by Jews " ! 
These are detestable sentiments ; I only say, God forbid they 
should ever get root in this country, which they would do, 
should the spirit of Romanism prevail. The very word 
toleration is a disgrace to the English language ; it is a re- 
proach to the tongue of any free people to utter it in refer- 
ence to religion, for it comprehends the whole essence of 
despotism. Religious toleration ! Nor is the word dissent 
in our country, a whit better, justly exposing any sect that 
shall undertake to fling it out to others, to the ridicule and 
reproach of Christendom. 

4. Intimately connected with this principle of private judg- 
ment of the Scriptures, and freedom in religious opinion, is 
another truth, which, in its combination with the being of 
nations, passes into a quality and a characteristic ; and must 
henceforth be an indispensable element of national greatness, 
the great truth of Justification by Faith. Here, again, 
1 speak the language of no sect, but of that universal wisdom 
which is above all sects, and by which all sects, that do not 
mean to die, must live. And I fearlessly affirm that this 
principle is as essential to the true greatness of a nation, as 
it is to the salvation of an individual soul. 1 affirm that it 
is, if only on the ground that this principle is at once the 



16 

principle of true spiritual freedom, and the source of a pure 
morality ; a morality that takes a man's being, and a coun- 
try's being out of self into disinterestedness ; a morality not 
of mint, anise, and cummin, but of noble deeds springing from 
noble hearts ; the spontaneous offering of forgiven children 
to a forgiving parent ; not to buy forgiveness, but as its fruit ; 
not to he forgiven, but because forgiven. As to the essence 
of freedom, Mr. Burke once said, with singular energy as 
well as truth, " he that fears God, fears nothing else ;" but 
the fear of God, which takes away every other fear, comes 
only out of Faith ; and perfect freedom is possible on no other 
conditions but those which make God our Father and us 
His children. We cannot believe that that principle, which 
binds together the whole family in earth and heaven, which 
shall be the constituting element of principalities and powers 
that are to endure when creation shall have passed away, 
can be of no importance in our national existence upon 
earth. In truth, we are but as the grub, the low chrysalis, in 
our present state, in comparison with that transfiguration, 
which is to take place through the pervading power of this 
principle in our social, political, and literary existence. This 
is that cup of immortality, which, whatsoever nation drinks 
it, shall pass into a permanence of glory, no more to be 
eclipsed, shadowed, or dissolved, till the final conflagration. 

This principle was Luther's Articuliis stantis vel cadentis 
Ecclesice. It is just as much so in politics and literature as 
in religion. We have had on this earth a long trial without 
it, without the preserving elements of a national existence. 



17 

This world has been the theatre of a mighty experiment ; 
whether nations could be prosperous and permanent in pride 
and sin. The result has been overwhelming. Empire after 
empire has fallen to the ground. I have passed over the 
ruins of dead and buried kingdoms, have seen the shades of 
departed monarchies, and conversed with them, haunting 
the spots of their former glory ; and the hollow voice, as if 
the wind were moaning from earth's central sepulchres, has 
spoken in the words of Scripture, deep unto deep, in my hear- 
ing, THE NATION AND KINGDOM THAT WILL NOT SERVE 
THEE SHALL PERISH j YEA, THOSE NATIONS SHALL BE 

UTTERLY WASTED. It is a solcmn thing to stand in the Co- 
losseum at Rome, beneath the shadow of the Parthenon at 
Athens, within the crumbling shrine of the temple of Karnak 
in Eo-ypt, and to listen to the echo of those awful words. 
These historical materials and monuments, are so many 
intelligent chords, which men's iniquities have wrought for 
that great Harp of the Past, across which God's Spirit sweeps 
with its majestic, awful utterance ! God grant that the his- 
tory of our nation may not add another tone of wailing to 
the melancholy voices of dead empires. 

The principle of Faith is yet to make a new Literature 
for nations and the world. The materials are among us, but 
the eye of genius has been heavy with slumber. The film 
and frost of custom conceal a thousand open truths. Almost 
the whole secret of discovery in science is the' perception 
and qiiestionmg of what is customary in a new light. 
There are now floating in our atmosphere of knowledge 

3 



18 

many common facts and observations, with connexions hid- 
den by the veil of custom, and concealed like the future it- 
self, but which are only waiting for a single question from 
some awakened mind, in some blessed mood of genius, in 
which this frosty veil is lifted, a single question like that ad- 
dressed by Newton to the fall of an apple, which may well" 
nigh open another universe of wonders. Now I apply this 
to the literature which is yet to be created out of the mate- 
rials of Divine Truth and the workings of our spiritual be- 
ing. And I am reminded of Mr. Coleridge's beautiful defini- 
tion of genius : " To carry the feelings of childhood into the 
powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder 
and novelty with appearances, which every day for, perhaps, 
forty years has rendered familiar, — 

With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, 
And man and woman, — 

this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the 
marks, which distinguish genius from talents." If we apply 
this to religious things, we cannot but see that a state of 
mind is requisite in every man analogous to the experience 
of genius with common truth in its freshness, in regard to 
the perception of divine truth ; and that this spiritual sense 
of the power and beauty of divine truth is essential to the 
perfection of a nation's literature. There is therefore a 
cause of illimitable power in the awakening and discipline 
of the mind of nations, as yet very little developed, but 
which is becoming every day more powerful. It is indi- 



19 

vidua] regeneration by the Spirit of God, which is to the 
perception, relish, and influence of divine truth what genius 
is to the wonderful influence of nature. This is yet to do 
more in disciplining the mind of nations, and in creating 
and energizing the world's literature, than all other causes. 
The operation of this cause is absolutely essential to the 
perfection of literature. All the forms of literature hitherto 
known have been deformed and lifeless, in comparison with 
the beauty and glory of those it shall assume beneath the 
baptism of the Spirit of God, when its material becomes di- 
vine truth, or earthly truth transfigured with celestial glory. 

It is not to be supposed for a moment that the presence or 
the absence of a religious atmosphere of thought and feeling 
would not create an entire difference in the productions of 
human genius. You might as well suppose that the vegeta- 
tion at the bottom of the sea can be no way different from 
that, which, beneath the bright sun, or the dewy stars, in- 
vests the earth's surface with its fragrant, flowering verdure. 
As great a difference will there be between the literature of a 
world embalmed with the Spirit of Him who died to redeem 
it, and that which is the growth of ages that have gloomily 
rolled on in the rejection of that Spirit, as between the sweet 
bloom of creation in the open light of heaven, and the rough, 
dark recesses of submarine forests of sponges and corals. 
Such as is indicated in this last image has much of the 
world's literature proved hitherto ; and in it sea-monsters 
have whelped and stabled. 

Now are we to behold a literature so full of all qualities 



20 

of loveliness and purity, such new regions of high thought 
and feeling before unimagined opened up in it to the mind, 
that to the dwellers in past days it should have seemed 
rather the production of angels than of men. Nor is this 
an imaginary view. The world and its literature, in its life 
without the Spirit of God, might powerfully remind the 
thoughtful observer of Plato's cave, and of the thoughts of 
its darkened inhabitants ; and when, from a higher eleva- 
tion, the spirit gets a glimpse of reality, then, looking over 
the works and businesses of this great ant-hill of humanity, 
our globe, we seem to see bands of chained men, even as 
Plato describes them, counting the shadows of subterranean 
fires, and making idols of popularity, out of the subtle in- 
tellects that most clearly distinguish and describe those 
shadows. These things must have an end ; and when men 
learn, beautifully and truly remarks one of our great native 
poets,* the outward by the inward to discern, the inward by 
the Spirit, they shall win 

Their way deep down into the soul. The light 
Shed in by God shall open to the sight 
Vast powers of being ; regions long untrod 
Shall stretch before them filled with life and God. 

All things shall breathe an air from upper climes. Then 
men listening, with the inward ear, — 

The ocean of eternity shall hear 

Along its coming waves ; and thou shalt see 

Its spiritual waters as they roll through thee. 

♦ Mr. Dana. 



21 

5. The next possession and element of National Great- 
ness, which I must notice, is the Christian Sabbath. 
We possess this blessing through the goodness of God, in a 
greater purity perhaps than any other people. The perma- 
nence of our institutions, the perpetuity of our freedom, de- 
pends greatly upon the carefulness with which we guard and 
preserve it. Here I am compelled to say, that there is a great 
insensibility to the preciousness and the preserving power of 
this blessinof. A thousand times better the austere strict- 
ness, with which our Puritan ancestors observed the holiness 
of this institution, than the looseness which too often charac- 
terizes their descendants in regard to it. In general, a na- 
tion's prosperity has been and is proportioned to the sacred- 
ness with which it keeps the Sabbath. The reasons are as 
simple and plain as the daylight. Wherever the Sabbath is 
kept, it makes holy and well educated families. It infuses 
into the poor and ignorant a sense of the blessings of cleanli- 
ness, knowledge, and virtue, and an ambition to possess 
them. It links the weeks of households, villages, cities, 
communities, with a golden chain of order and of love run- 
ninar through them. It is the education of a nation, where, 
one-seventh portion of our time, we are all at school to- 
gether. It promotes industry, and yet checks it from over- 
tasking the tired frame of the labourer or the working mind 
of the student, by the obligation of a heavenly leisure inter- 
vening. By recalling the busiest worshippers of Mammon 
from the vortex, and the din, and the strife of our external 
world of selfishness and avarice, to the quiet fireside, as 



22 ^ 

well as the solemnity of the Sanctuary, it increases our sense 
of the blessedness of home, makes homely blessings more 
precious, quickens the pulses of affectionate hearts in the 
ties of the family constitution, and prevents the utter wean- 
ino- of the heart from home, in men who would otherwise 
live in the world and be of the world entirely.* 
" But this is not all : — our Sabbath is a day of sacred rest, 
but not of indolence ; it is a day of intellectual and spiritual 
awakening ; a day in which a great, onward, lofty impulse 
is given simultaneously to the minds of a whole people, in 
the bringing of themes before them, which are a study for 
the intellect of angels. So that the Sabbath, as God has in- 

* The notice given by Wilberforce, of the suicide of Lord Castlereagh, 
as proceeding from the overtasking of his faculties on the Sabbath as on 
the week day, is strikingly in point : 

"He was certainly deranged — the effect probably of continued wear and 
tear of mind. But the strong impression of my mind is, that it is the effect of 
the non-observance of the Sunday, both as abstracting from politics, from the 
constant recurrence of the same reflections, and as correcting the false views 
of worldly things, and bringing them down to their true diminutiveness. Poor 
Castlereagh ! I never was so shocked by any incident. He really was the last 
man in the world who appeared likely to be carried away into the commission 
of such an act ! So cool, so self-possessed. It is very curious to hear the 
newspapers speaking of incessant application to business, forgetting that by 
the weekly admission of a day of rest, which our Maker has graciously en- 
joined, our faculties would be preserved from the effects of this constant strain. 
I am strongly impressed by the recollection of your endeavour to prevail on the 
lawyers to give up Sunday consultations, in which poor Romilly would not 
concur. If he had suffered his mind to enjoy such occasional remissions, it is 
hishly probable the strings would never have snapped as they did, from over, 
tension. Alas ! alas ! poor fellow ! I did not think I should feel for him so 
very deeply." — Life of Wilberforce, Vol. 5, page 134. 



23 

stituted it, does more to enlarge and invigorate a nation's 
mind, than all other causes. It is like a periodic inundation 
of the Nile, after which the week itself is sown and harvest- 
ed with virtues and blessings. This, most certainly, is ihe 
grand reason for the intellectual superiority of Protestant 
over Catholic countries, where the Sabbath is merely a waste 
and dissipation of the national mind, and concurs, with other 
causes, with the multiplicity of other Feast Days, to sap the 
energies and morals of the people. In proportion as we 
neglect the Sabbath, we open the door to the same evils 
which every where meet the traveller in Romish countries. 

This institution then is the constituted safeguard, in Di- 
vine Providence, of all our blessings. No nation can care- 
lessly permit the habits of neglect and profanation of its 
sacredness to creep upon her cities, and not be deeply in- 
jured. Those Sabbath nuisances, that from time to time 
spring up through the profligacy of individuals, ought to be 
destroyed as soon as attempted. I have witnessed much 
profaning of the Sabbath, and in many forms ; in countries 
where such profanation was esteemed a virtue, and where, 
though allowed, it was esteemed a sin ; but, all things con- 
sidered, I have never seen a more disgraceful form of such 
profanation, than here in this city, under the very eye of the 
authorities, prevails in the daily Sabbath sale of polluted 
and polluting public journals. 

6. Connected with the Christian Sabbath, another element 
not merely of national greatness, but, considering the peculiar 



24 

nature of our institutions, of national existence, is tiiat of a 
Christian Education. Education alone will not save us. 
Much has been said, and justly, on the necessity of general 
intelligence as the ground-work of republican institutions ; 
and alarming facts are arrayed as to the increasing ignorance 
of the people of the United States. But intelligence alone is 
not the qualification which the peculiar nature of our insti- 
tutions renders necessary. Goodness, moral goodness, is re- 
quisite, integrity of character, sincere patriotism. That this 
is that part of a Christian education, which is needed more 
than knowledge, I hesitate not to affirm. Without it, the 
universal diffusion of knowledge will but prepare this coun- 
try to become a mere gladiatorial arena of contending parties, 
where pride, selfishness, passion in every shape, may have 
room to battle for the victory. Now, it is not Common 
Schools alone that can make a Christian education ; if they 
be separated from the Gospel, or the Gospel separated from 
them, it is plain that they do but train the evil in men's 
hearts for a more skilful, desperate, unprincipled conflict for 
victory, and what are called the spoils of victory. 

There are two things needed in the common education of 
this country more than in that of any other country on earth ; 
a religious morality .^ and that great and noble quality, which, 
in spite of the priceless excellence of our institutions, and 
their claims upon our affections, we are in danger of losing, 
A LOFTY patriotism. The education demanded is one of 
self-discipline, self-government, and the merging of private 
ends in the common welfare. It is already proved that in 



25 

no country in the world are there so many temptations to 
private selfishness as in this ; temptations to convert our 
country's sacred service into a mean and miserable scramble 
for office. In other countries the frowning buttresses of 
despotism will stand, though private selfishness prevails and 
rages ; but our institutions are so open and etherial, and yet 
so complicated, and so delicate in their adjustment, they sup- 
pose so much sterling principle, such forgetfulness of self, 
such regard to truth and righteoushess, that without these 
qualities they are nothing ; they cannot last, they are not 
fit for the government of a people destitute of self-discipline. 
Our government is indeed the government not so much of 
the people, as of themselves by the people ; and it would 
be a new thing indeed in the world, if a mass of men, by 
the mere circumstance of being massed together, should de- 
velope qualities, which they do not possess personally and 
singly. Our government is an attempt to disprove the bitter 
sarcasm of tyrants, that mankind cannot govern themselves ; 
and in truth mankind have generally been so destitute of 
moral principle, that they have had to appoint perpetual 
dictators against the violence of their own passions. Be 
assured that if men had been fit to govern themselves, they 
would have done it ; despots would have been monsters 
unknown. Most fearlessly do I assert that men do not 
know how to govern themselves except by the guidance 
of God's Spirit. This fits men for self-government, but we 
know of nothing else that will. A common school educa- 
tion which consists in mere intelligence, will never produce 

4 



26 

this fitness. I repeat it, a Christian Education is sup- 
posed, as absolutely necessary, as the ground of perma- 
nence and success in our institutions. Let a single genera- 
tion grow up without it, and though ever so saturated with 
knowledge, we are lost. If our common schools and other 
educational interests be penetrated with the influences of 
the Gospel, we are saved. The Sabbath and the Pulpit con- 
stitute a most essential part of the education, as well as the 
manly discipline, of this country. The Pulpit, the Sab- 
bath, and the Common School, will all have to unite in the 
incessant application of holy influences, as well as the com- 
munication of knowledge, if our country's institutions are to 
be preserved. 

7. Here then we have developed another element of national 
greatness, which hitherto the world has utterly neglected, but 
without which, though nations may be great in despotism 
and misery, and the grandeur which attends them, they can- 
not be great in liberty and happiness. This element is the 
presence of the regenerating Spirit of God. Without 
this, we cannot exist in our present form of government, 
though we may exist, split into despotisms, contending 
and warring, enacting over again the same scenes that have 
filled the history of Europe for ages. The lovers of liberty 
and the friends of their race in Europe have been looking to 
us with bright and steadfast hope ; but they cannot look to 
us, if they do not look to God. We have indeed a glorious 
framework, if the Spirit of God imbue it : but how little do 



27 

they think of that. They have been looking to our institu- 
tions, as we have ourselves, for salvation ; but already their 
courage begins to fail, not from any thing disastrous in the 
institutions, but from what they see in the people. Now our 
institutions can no more make a free and noble people, than 
a church liturgy can make a holy church. It is the people 
that must breathe the life of freedom into their institutions, 
as it is the heart that must breathe its piety into prayer, or 
no form can create it, though it were moulded by the hand 
of God. It may be that God means to demonstrate to the 
world, by permitting our passions, our selfishness, our athe- 
ism, to make the dreadful experiment, how perfectly ineffica- 
cious without the Divine Spirit, are the very best institutions, 
which the cultivated wisdom and piety of ages could discover 
or frame, to restrain men's wickedness or to make them free 
and happy. God grant the world may be spared so fearful 
a demonstration ; six thousand years have been filled with 
such developements ; and yet this may be necessary as a last 
one, and a most significant and solemn lesson it would read. 
We grasp at shadows, we weary ourselves in vain, we lean 
upon a broken reed, which will pierce us, if we look any 
where below God. I have been told that recently the great 
French statesman and philosopher, M. Guizot, has written to 
a friend in this country, imploring him, if possible, to give the 
anxious friends of liberty in the old world some hope. But 
Guizot does not dream of God's Spirit ; and his friend should 
tell him, what multitudes in this country have yet to learn, 
that without the baptism of that Spirit, though instead of the 



28 

dark clouds that seem to his vision to be gathering, all indi- 
cations were as bright as the sun, and placid and pure as a 
day in midsummer, if the whole hope of the world centred 
in our institutions, it would fail. Chains, says Cowper, 

Chains are the portion of revolted man, 
Stripes and a dungeon : — 

and he finds them all three, the Christian poet adds, in his 
own body, in his own being, until he turns to God. This 
is the truth inculcated in Burke's powerful language, — It 
is written in the eternal constitution of things, 
that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. 
Their passions forge their fetters. 

There is then no hope for us, but in the outpouring of 
the Spirit of God ; for this it is the duty of every Christian 
patriot to plead, to be " night and day praying exceedingly." 

To corroborate this view let us now glance for a moment 
at some of the dangers which threaten us, some of the influ- 
ences, which are working, both secretly and openly, to blast 
our hopes. Wherever God has been sowing good seed in 
the world, the enemy has been sowing tares. Into the seed- 
corn, which God took out of Egypt, the Enemy threw his 
handful ; it was enough ; and after forty years winnowing 
in the wilderness, still it was there. It grew betimes into a 
strong overpowering crop, so that while the corn was 
dwarfed and sickly, the tares, as in their native soil, rose up 
a dark, dense forest. This time it was Idolatry. It was an 



29 

infusion from the habits of demon worship on the Nile. 
Three thousand years after this, the seed which God took 
out of Judea was the best in the world. But the Enemy was 
there. With stealthy, noiseless tread he passed among the 
churches, dropping his germs of evil, and with luxuriant 
growth they filled all nations, their overshadowing foliage 
shutting out the light, and baleful dews and fruits dropping 
from the branches. This time it was Popery. It was an in- 
fusion of germs from the eifete traditions of Judaism. Once 
more — the seed which God collected to sow in this Conti- 
nent was the best in the world. For some of it He winnowed 
three kingdoms ; and yet, the Enemy was there. This time 
it was not Idolatry, it was not Popery, it was Slavery. 
He dropped his seed quietly into the earth, and went his 
way. Two hundred annual suns have ripened it. It is a 
question yet to be decided : Will it destroy our institutions? 
Manifold are the dangers which arise out of it, fearful are 
the evils which it brings in its train. 

There is a rule, according to which every government 
should be framed, and all national policy determined, as 
strictly as individual conduct. Our government, more than 
any other in the world, professes to regard it. " Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye'even so to them." 
We are but beginning to feel the evils, which the violation 
of this rule must work among us, if it be persisted in. In- 
deed, there is no infraction of this rule, but, sooner or later, 
will work its revenge. There is no injury to the feelings, 
but makes its mark upon the universe. The universe is as 



30 

a sort of electric telegraph, to take up the moans of the 
helpless, and to write them in letters indestructible even by 
the final conflagration. Nor is there a plaint ever falls from 
injured humanity, but it falls into the ear of God, and waits 
its appointed time of judgment. Thou, O man, that walkest 
amidst the ruins of thine own producing, that seestbut thine 
own will before thee, and waterest thy backward path with 
the tears of those that come lamenting after, thou shalt walk 
again amidst these scenes of thine own carelessness and self- 
indulgence ; thou shalt, led by the Erynnys of thine own 
mind, the serpent-haired slave-driver of oppressors, retrace 
the desolate spots of trampled rights and injured feelings, 
where every step shall be as over a burning marie, but ten 
thousand times more agonizing, than if thou wert treading 
amidst the penal fires of fallen angels. 

This is a sad subject, and yet there is hope, even in the 
evils we may suffer. There is a discipline of nations as of 
individuals ; and with nations, as with individuals, there is a 
precious jewel in adversity. It is a mistake to suppose that 
uninterrupted national prosperity is the path to national 
greatness. Here as well as there, nationally as well as in- 
dividually, the beautiful language of Cowper may be applied: 

The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. 

Men must be tried, nations must be tried ; and the evil 
that will not be persuaded out of them must be burned out 
of them. Especially must this be the case, if God is going 



31 

to use them remarkably for his purposes. The temper of 
the weapon must be proved, the latent flaws must be de- 
veloped and worked off, the evil tendencies, that in a new 
and untried scene of being v/ould break out and disappoint 
a noble design of its execution, must be revealed and extir- 
pated. When the design is on the eve of its accomplish- 
ment, there must be no springing of the materials, no break- 
ing of the instruments, no turning of their edges. 

Now it may be that God will work this evil of slavery 
out of us, by the great evils which it causes us to suffer. 
With nations as with individuals, God may use their own 
sins as the meq,ns of chastising and correcting them, even 
while he spares them, and means still to use them for his 
own glory. Here is our hope ; and I confess that in some 
aspects of the subject, it seems to be our only hope. 

Permit me once more on this point to refer you to a man, 
whose pages I can never open without admiration, whose 
wisdom I can never contemplate without reverence ; a man 
who, though born and educated the most chivalrous and loyal 
of monarchists, promulgated sentiments that our Republic 
would do well to build upon ; — the illustrious Edmund 
Burke. "There is a time," he says, "when men will not 
suffer bad things because their ancestors suffered worse. 
There is a time, when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will 
neither draw reverence, nor obtain protection, I do most 
seriously put it to administration, to consider the wisdom of 
a timely reform. Early reformations are amicable arrange- 
ments with a friend in power ; late reformations are terms 



32 

imposed upon a conquered enemy : early reformations are 
made in cool blood ; late reformations are made under a 
state of inflammation. In that state of things the people be- 
hold in government nothing that is respectable. They see 
the abuse, and they will see nothing else. They fall into 
the temper of a furious populace, provoked at the disorder of 
a house of ill-fame ; they never attempt to correct or regu- 
late ; they go to work by the shortest way. They abate the 
nuisance, they pull down the house," 

A second danger which I shall mention arises from the 
base and unprincipled means and instruments employed in 
this country by the demon of Party Spirit. Men will soon 
become debauched and unprincipled themselves, who will 
resort to unprincipled helpers. The materials of this evil 
come to us from abroad. The North and the South ought 
to have united in protecting this country from the shoals of 
ignorant and vicious emigration that pour in upon us from 
the old world. The admission of them as native elements 
is like opening a vein and injecting a virulent poison in the 
system. The most iron constitution would sink beneath 
such a process. But to think of these dregs from the putrid 
sinks of Europe being bought at a price, being ravenously 
snatched at by the Spirit of Party ! It is a most enormous, 
most insufferable wrong. 

I am not willing to be misunderstood, nor am I afraid of 
it by any candid mind. I do not forget, no patriot ever can, 
how much we owe to the disinterested friendship of intelli- 



33 

gent and virtuous foreigners. We have iiad n Lafayette to 
fight side by side with Washington the battles of our native 
land, in the hour of our peril ; and when he came to his 
adopted country, to see its prosperity, in his old age, we re- 
ceived him with the joy and filial reverence of children 
towards a long absent parent. No ! we love to enumerate 
all that we owe to the patriotism of foreigners ; but we love 
to remember that they have been patriots, not hirelings. 
We love the virtuous and intelligent families of foreigners, 
domesticated and naturalized among us. Some of them are 
among our own most true and valued personal friends. We 
love to consider our Country as the asylum of liberty for 
the oppressed in all the world ; but not an asylum for the 
wicked, the abandoned, the profligate, the " unwhipt of jus- 
tice," for those who, in their own country, would only fill 
the poor-houses and the jails. It is a very different thing to 
make this country an asylum for the oppressed, and to make 
it the Botany Bay of all Europe. How often have we heard 
the sarcasms of foreigners on the riots that have broken out 
among us ! How often, nay, how constantly have the ma- 
terials of such riots, the materials of our disgrace in the eyes 
of Europe, been found in the sediment of that torrent of 
emigration, which they themselves have poured over iis ! 

It seems a melancholy thing that we could not, for a sea- 
son, have been shut out from all communication with the 
old world, and left to grow up and knit into manhood with 
our native materials. It is a most undeniable fact, that in 
many respects persons are not fitted to take part in our 

5 



34 

government even as voters, who have not been, for some 
good period at least, educated among us. There is needed 
some little practical knowledge of our institutions, some sort 
of acquaintance with their workings, some insight into the 
relative action of parties, and some knowledge of the many 
and complicated currents of influences among us, over 
which a patriotic and intelligent voter must keep watch, if 
he would not be the mere tool of others. I have been 
pleased with a recent conversation on this point with a most 
enlightened and patriotic foreigner, one who loves his own 
country and therefore loves ours, and who looks with deep 
anxiety on the tide of foreign emigration that sets, at the 
direction of our enemies, into our ballot boxes. Gladly, 
said he, would I relinquish my privilege as a voter, could 
I help you to ward oiF the evil that I see you suffering from 
the multitudes of foreign paupers and venal masses of men, 
that threaten to undermine your institutions. 

Another intelligent and excellent foreigner expressed the 
opinion that twenty-one years' residence in this country 
ought to be required by law before voting ; at least as long 
as a native citizen is obliged to spend from the birth, before 
he can enjoy this privilege. In fact, without some such 
requisition, we degrade ourselves in comparison with all 
other nations. We put a premium upon the foreigner, and 
we open our dearest interests to the undermining efforts of 
all forms of Jesuitism in the world. Little would there be 
to fear from the efforts of Roman Catholics among us, if a 



35 

twenty-one years' residence, or the half of it were necessary 
before foreigners con Id vote. The temptation to buy votes 
and to sell them, to bribe and to be bribed, and to drag 
foreign paupers to the polls as soon as they are landed, 
would be in great measure taken away. The greatest 
sources of evil in our elections would be cut off, and the 
whole play of our affairs would be easier and fairer. 

In general, it is a fact that those affinities which lead men 
to emigrate to this country do not indicate the right sort of 
character for our institutions. The radicalism of Europe is 
not what we want. The Radicals of Europe are not fit to 
be Republicans. Loyalty is a virtue ; but those v/ho pour 
in upon us from Europe are too often loyal to nothing but 
ignorance and unsettled principles. I would a thousand 
times rather have a tide of emiarration from the strongfest 
tories ; for a man who is not loyal to his king in a country 
like England, will have no patriotism at all in a Republic 
like ours. If the kingdoms of Europe had conspired for our 
destruction, they could not have adopted a more judicious 
plan, than to roll over us a ground-wave from their own 
uneducated population. The ignorant, venal, miscreant 
character of a great portion of it, forms one of our greatest 
dangers. This is an evil that increases ail our native evils, 
whatever they may be. 

Another evil which I must notice is this, — the want of a 
sense of national responsibility, the want of a national con- 
science. We are not worse than England in this respect. 



36 

Ood forbid ! — but this gives us no high character : and it 
is to be remembered that a degree of wickedness, which in a 
monarchy and a profligate aristocracy is expected, and 
hardly noticed, and which is but as another coating of moss 
over the weather-beaten castles of oppression, may shake 
our institutions to pieces, " The best governments," said 
Lord Bacon, in one of his excellent aphorisms, " are always 
subject to be- like the fairest crystals, wherein every icicle 
or grain is seen, which in a fouler stone is never perceived." 
A disregard of rectitude and a violence and cruelty of inva- 
sion on our part, like that which has marked the unprincipled 
career of England in China and Aflghanistan, would have 
turned the whole world against us. 

We have the evil of a national conscience warped by con- 
flicting interests among State governments. At the iniquitous 
suit, and under the rapacious out-cry of one of our States, a 
national treaty with the Indians is no more regarded than a 
parchment of the dark ages. One or two acts of public 
fraud upon large masses, allowed or connived at by the 
government, will go far to compromit its principles ; and be- 
sides, will set an example to the State governments that 
cannot fail to be followed. If the government of the United 
States begin with injustice and oppression, no matter upon 
what class, or for what supposed necessity, the government 
of the States will continue the career in public repudiation^ 
and then private corporations will follow the example in 
enormous acts of swindling, and private individuals and 
fraudulent bankrupts and defaulters will complete the game. 



37 

Corruption thus may spread to the heart's core, while yet 
every thino- external looks fair and fiourishins:. This mon- 
strous form of public debauchery, the repudiation of State 
debts, rivals the catalogue of State vices all the world over. 
The burninof indisfriation and sarcasm of a Juvenal would 
have found nothing to surpass it in meanness, in cowardice, 
in falsehood, in iniquity, even among the rotting corruptions 
of public and private morality in the carcass of the Roman 
Empire. And what argues, and no wonder that it should, 
to the mind of observers from abroad, a portentous derelic- 
tion of moral principle and public conscience throughout 
the whole country, is the callousness, the apathy, the cool 
endurance, with which the proposition of such perfidious, 
such swindling, such sweeping insolvency has been received. 
Surely, if we go on in this way, we shall become a by-word 
to the nations. It will no longer be Punica fides that points 
the moral of the school-boy, and tips the arrow of the public 
satirist with gall. 

Another evil which I shall notice, and a great danger, be- 
cause it springs partly out of the freedom we enjoy, is to 
be found in the nature, prevalence, and power of our News- 
paper Literature. It is left in great measure to chance, or 
to the upturnings of political party scum, who shall be its 
leaders, and what may be its shape ; and yet there is nothing 
that should be guarded w^ith more watchfulness, nothing 
into which the spirit of a pure morality and high political 
honour, and true patriotism, is more needful to be breathed. 



38 

There is nothing of such mio^hty power among us, no ma- 
chinery that will exert a more inevitable influence either to 
bless or to destroy. The influence of our newpapers upon 
our higher literature is deplorable ; but this would be nothing 
if the public utterances of our newpapers were utterances of 
truth. They are becoming a school of Sophists worse than 
ever were bred in the literature of Greece. As to the 
Sophists in that country, the opinion of Schlegel that the 
political purity of the Grecian governments was at last en- 
tirely overthrown by them is deeply to be pondered ; for the 
same sophistry may reign here, which there had the merit 
of creating a spirit of corruption and debasement, which 
neither party-strife, nor protracted wars, nor foreign bribery, 
nor bloody revolutions, had been able to produce. No 
Sophists ever walked beneath the open air of that delicious 
clime, and taught the people, whose influence was to be 
compared to that of the daily issues of the newspaper press 
in this country. Nor can we speak the painfulness of our 
emotions, when we see these daily schools of thousands of 
our people under the care of mere hirelings ; when we see 
some of the leading journals of our land in the hands of 
men utterly destitute of moral principle. 

I shall mention but one more danger ; it is connected 
with the prevalence of Romanism. Men have sometimes 
descanted on the danger of an imperium in imperio. Look- 
ing at the universal nature of Romanism as developed in the 
world's history, I confess that I am afraid of it. The Ro- 



39 

manists move in close phalanx. There is a power in the 
Vatican at Rome, which they still acknowledge ; they are 
proud of it ; and never yet has one of the assumptions of 
that MAN OF SIN, who still " sitteth in the temple of God 
showing himself that he is God," been laid aside. It is an 
amusing picture that Bunyan has drawn of the Pope in his 
cave, as a rheumatic old giant, biting his lips, and mumbling 
between his teeth to the passing pilgrims, " You will never 
mend till more of you are burned." There are signs in some 
quarters of Giant Grim's rheumatism being cured. At all 
events, he still has an arm long enough to reach across the 
Atlantic ; and if it be true that the Roman Catholic voters 
in this country will move at his bidding, then, since it is 
true that the phalanx of such voters is strong enough to 
sway the balance between parties, there may be some proba- 
bility in the assertion that ten years will not pass away, be- 
fore the President of these United States will be nominated 
in the Vatican. That Romanism is the same in this coun- 
try as in the old world, is sufficiently manifest from its 
hostility against the Scriptures. We have witnessed in this 
very State a monstrous act of sacrilege in an Auto da fe of 
Romanists for the burning of the Word of God, and two 
hundred Bibles were committed to the flames ! I confess 
that I am afraid of the action of Romanism upon my coun- 
try's liberties. I am afraid of the influence of whatever is 
afraid of the Bible. If there be a sect that lives by shutting 
out the light, in a country like ours, such a system is dan- 
gerous. It has been remarked with great point and power, 



40 

on the occasion of the recent Biblical Conflagration, that the 
only light, which the system of Romanism would willingly 
shed from the Bible on the people, is " the light of its holy 
leaves on fire," 

Gentlemen of the New England Society ; — I am grateful 
for the opportunity of addressing you on this occasion. We 
all recognise and venerate the New England privilege of 
speaking one's mind. .Sent ire quid velis, et quod sentias 
dicere, to think what you please, and to speak what you 
think, we hope will ever be an element in the civil, social, 
and religious atmosphere of that beloved native region of 
ours, where no slave breathes, and if the genius of New 
England can prevent it, never shall ! Suffer me to close 
with THE Memory of our Pilgrim Fathers, and with 
the grateful recognition of the truth, that as they did what 
never had been done in Europe, founded an Empire in self- 
denial, suffering, and the most unwavering trust in God, so 
we, more than any other nation in the world, two hundred 
years after the landing of the Pilgrims, are thrown entirely 
upon the Spirit of God for the success and stability of our 
institutions. A Despotism may stand by the very misery of 
its subjects ; a free and happy Republic can stand only by 
the blessing and the help of God. 



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